Dark Sister (10 page)

Maggie didn't know what offence she might
have given. "I am careful."

"Yes, you're a one, I can see that.
Liz can see that, but it's clear you ain't all released. You don't know
when-the-day."

"Sorry?'

"You ain't expressed at all. Not
released. Though I
sees
you are a one."

"A one what?"

"Don't try and kid on at Liz, because
you're just a girl.
A slip."

Maggie relaxed for the first time since
entering the cottage. "Do you mean—
"

"Hoi!"
Liz silenced her with a wave of her stick.
"None o'
that."

Liz's eccentricity made Maggie smile. She
shook her head, as if trying to flick away the very charm of the old woman's
strangeness.
"All right.
What do you mean by
saying I'm not released?"

Liz dropped her stick and slowly put her
arms round her own shoulders, hugging herself. She lifted up her knees and
hugged them into herself as far as she could, old limbs parodying the younger
woman opposite. Liz was grinning and blinking at Maggie from behind her
spectacles.

"I'm doing my best!"

Liz unfolded herself. "Your best
might not be enough for what's at call."

"And what is at call?"

"You tell me."

"Ash thought you might help me with
the flying ointment."

"
Pssshhttttt
!"
Liz dismissed her with a wave of
the hand and looked away.

"Will you?" Maggie said after a
while.

"Listen to this:

I'm a-going on me way, a-going on me
way.

I sees this I sees that, I sees what I
see.

I
knows
as
I'll not tell a soul,

For it's
nowt
to do
wi
' me."

Liz
sat back in her chair
and closed her eyes. Within seconds she was asleep and snoring gently.

Maggie sipped her tea. The
grandmother clock ticked on over Liz's head, the heavy pendulum swinging from
side to side. Maggie felt extraordinarily drowsy herself. She had to resist a
temptation to close her eyes. The old lady slept on in the chair, still
grasping her walking stick. Maggie was tempted just to get up and leave, but
thought it too ill-mannered. She sat, and waited silently.

Presently Liz opened one eye and looked at
her. She roused herself in her chair. "If you draw that curtain
back," she said indicating the larder, "you can pour us a glass of
elderberry wine."

"I can't." Maggie looked at the
clock. "I've got to pick up my little boy in half an hour or there'll be
hell to pay."

"Eh? Got to go? What's the point of
comin
’ 'ere at all if you've got to go?
"

"Cant be helped." She stood up.

"
You
comin
'
again tomorrow?"

"Can't."

"Go on then. Bugger off," said Liz.

Maggie turned at the door.
"Can I come back again next week?"

"You just bugger off," said Liz, looking hard at the wall.

Maggie let herself out. She stopped
at the gate to take a breath before walking back to her car, uncertain whether
to feel amused or irritated by the old woman. Certainly the meeting hadn't produced
the help and guidance she was looking for.

She wasn't looking for an
explanation necessarily, but for a context, a framework for understanding. The
inspirational message about where to dig in the castle grounds had left her
feeling a little too pleased with
herself
. She hadn't
felt the need to question it. But the sexual frenzy of the other evening had astonished
even her. It was not as if something had taken her over; she was not possessed.
On the contrary, she'd remained ultimately in control of what was happening.
But the ferocity of the power which had suddenly been made available to her had
genuinely shocked her.

Liz had not been able to offer her
anything. Old people want to talk, Maggie thought as she drove home, but they
don't want to listen, or respond, or give. Liz wasn't so much different from
many very elderly people she'd met, half senile, self-absorbed, cantankerous,
demanding.

She resolved not to bother the old woman again.

SEVENTEEN

"
I
was talking to Mr. De Sang," said Alex.

"Oh, yes?"

"He's got some interesting views."

"Yes?" said Maggie. The children
were in bed. The fire was dying in the grate and Dot commanded her usual
position stretched before it, twitching occasionally in her dog dreams.

"He was talking about something he
called
projection.
Do you know what that is?"

"You're about to tell me."

"When Sam feels upset by his
mum and dad arguing, he naturally projects a threat to his security and
happiness. He then deals with this projection by contradicting everything, or
by bad behaviour, in order to get the attention and security he really needs."

"It's a neat enough
theory."

"Similarly," said Alex,
"when Maggie feels unhappy, she contemplates separation or even
infidelity. But she can't admit this to herself, so she projects this on her
husband."

"De Sang told you that?"

"No. I'm just trying to work
things out."

"I see. The name of the game
is Alex has found a new word."

"Don't be angry. I'm trying to
help."

"This is not a good way of
doing it."

"Got a better idea?"

"Yes. Come for a walk with me.
Now."

"It's after eleven!"

"All the
more reason to go.
When did we last take a midnight stroll? There's a
beautiful new moon out. Can't you see how important it is to do new things?
Walk under a new moon? Strip the scales off our eyes?"

"Why?"

"Because I
want to show you things!
You always used to be the one to show me
things, and now I want to show you things. We need it. We need to share things.
When did we stop sharing things? When did we stop caring about what's happening
inside each other's head? When did we stop watching for each other's reactions?"

"We don't need to go outside
to do that."

"Oh, come on, Alex! The world
is a different place at midnight. There's a power to it."

"It's impossible! What about
the kids?"

"Wake them up! We'll take 'em
with us."

"What's the matter with you?
Amy's got school in the morning."

"They'll both learn more this
way. Life doesn't have to be lived by timetable!"

"For
Christ's sake.
I'm going to bed."

He left Maggie pleading to an empty
room and went upstairs. Moments later he heard the front door click shut. He
looked out of the window and saw her get into the car, accompanied by a sleepy
but happy-looking Dot.

Maggie parked the car and the
crescent of the new moon afforded enough light for her to pick a path through
the woods, with Dot snuffling at the damp, leafy way ahead. She had an
inventory of plants and herbs to gather from the hedgerows at the perimeter of
the woods, but first she wanted to collect something more mercurial: a
sensation of the trees at night, an impression of dark places.

The new moon glimpsed through the
trees was white, waxy, and maiden. Her crescent was turned upwards, like a pair
of horns; her light traced delicate patterns on the leaves of the trees,
running moist between shadows. The wood was a plane of silver and black, a
newly minted world. The cool night fanned Maggie's face. Her skin was silver,
the dog was silver, and the east-facing boughs of the trees were illuminated,
all half-plated with dull silver, generating a soft lustre. Maggie encroached
deeper into the woods.

There was no sound. The earth swallowed
their footfalls, and even Dot trotted on in an envelope of shining silence. The
absence of sound conferred a visual intensity: trees stood in ranks making
outlandish gestures, like spectators arrayed along the path; huge fungi
festooned along fallen trunks were pumped full of intoxicant night air; bracken
heads coiled like snakes. The night was spinning something of itself on an
unseen wheel, something fine, elusive. Maggie stopped and listened. Dot
stopped.

There was a presence in the woods.

It was like a low breathing, of
trees exhaling. Far off, a dog fox barked, three times. Dot's hackles rose, and
Maggie felt her own flesh ripple, and the hair stirred on her neck. It was like
a signal, and her body was answering. A call, indicating they were in the
presence of something magnificent, something holy and terrifying.

Maggie had been holding her breath. Her throat was constricted.
She released a sigh, hardly daring to disturb the stillness. The trees rustled
in answer; they shivered, and the rustle of leaves on the uppermost branches
was like the swirl of a cape as the breathing came closer. Dot
lay
down on her belly and put her head between her legs.
Maggie wanted to do the same: fling
herself
on the
ground and hide her head. The hair on the nape of her neck bristled. Her skin
crawled.

But she knew she must stand tall and win the respect
of whatever was out there. A voice came into her head.

Just to look at you.

Then a perfume, streaming from the
earth.
Not merely the moist wood smells, the decay of leaf, of fungus
and bark, not just that which was always there.
Something
else.
A spice, some bright herb, a mother earth smell;
a signal-scent, property of the presence arrayed in the woods before her,
behind her, all about.
A hot wave flushed over her, followed by a chill.

Maggie was paralyzed. The moonlight in the woods
flared momentarily, became a ring of silver fire all around her. A drop of
dew—one brilliant, tiny, concentrated sphere of moonlight— dropped from a leaf and
splashed her forehead. She was anointed. She tipped back her head and opened
her mouth, and a second drop, like a silver coin, was placed on her tongue.

A name came to her, and she knew now in whose presence
she stood. It was a name she had come across in the diary. It rippled free from
some place deep inside her and presented itself on her tongue.

It was a name which had meant little to her when she'd
first seen it, but which now magically summarized the moment in all its
fullness. To state the name was to state the nature. The tree branches swirling
like a dark cape confirmed her presence. The moon's horned coronet.
The earth-spiced perfume and the holy ring of silver flame.
The anointing, the gift.
She had been granted speech.

"Goddess," she breathed. "
Hecate
."

Alex sat up in bed pretending to read a novel. He was
only feigning to himself. It was well after one o'clock and Maggie hadn't
returned. He was both annoyed and concerned for her safety. Scrambling from his
bed, he tugged back the curtain. Outside, a faint white moonlight issued from a
cloudless sky. New moon, Maggie had said. He thought the moon had a diseased
look.

He pulled on his dressing gown. There was
something he wanted to check out while Maggie was gone.

The spare room... He was convinced Maggie
had been storing things in there, hiding something from him. Perhaps it was the
excessive interest she'd shown in wanting to restore the room to some sort of
order, or maybe it was the way in which the door had only lately been kept
clicked shut that had tipped him off. He'd intended to confront her about it
directly. So why hadn't he?

The spare room, being no more than
a tiny shoebox shape, was useful only as storage space. It had become a dump
for old clothes, worn-out appliances, broken toys, boxes of books and papers—anything
they couldn't bear to throw away. He went rummaging, unsure of what he was
looking for exactly, but certain there was something to be found.

He cleared a lot of old shoes from
the foot of the wardrobe to get to a large cardboard box underneath. He had an
allergy to the dust he was disturbing. It brought on a sudden perspiration and
a fit of sneezing. His temperature shot up, making him angry with the box he
was endeavouring to wrestle out of the wardrobe. It was wedged against the
wooden uprights, and he tore at it to release it. When he finally ripped open a
corner to reveal a length of white lace, he realized it was only the container
for Maggie's wedding dress. He stuffed the box back in the wardrobe, hurling
shoes on top of it.

A kind of madness swept over him as
he prowled the room, tossing clothes aside and tearing open sealed boxes of old
archaeology journals and papers. Then he noticed the trunk. It was partly
concealed by a pile of paperbacks stacked on top of its closed lid. He pawed
the books to the floor and rattled the lid. It was locked. The key was normally
left in the lock. He kicked the lid angrily.

He hurried downstairs and came back with a file,
easily snapping the lock. The trunk was over spilling with photograph albums
and wallets of snapshots. He lifted all of them out before convincing himself
they were hiding nothing, slamming the lid back down on the trunk.

He was restacking the books on the trunk when another
idea chased him back to the wardrobe. He lifted out the shoes and felt the
weight of the wedding-dress box. He shook it. It rattled. He lifted it and
something slid about inside. He had to stand the box on end before it would
come out of the wardrobe.

The long, white silk and lace dress was folded in half
and wrapped in delicate tissue paper. Alex lifted it from the box as if it
might disintegrate in his hands. Underneath was what he was looking for.

The diary, plus a collection of
other objects.
There was the jar of
handfasting
oil—he failed to recognize it as the one from which Maggie had massaged him
over a week ago. He took off the top, sniffed it, and stood it on the trunk.
There were other items: a stone pestle and mortar; a wooden-handled knife; a
brass incense pot; a wooden stick stripped of its bark; an enamel pot; a bottle
of olive oil; a collection of coloured candles (some partially burned); an
eyedropper; needles and cloth; and assorted candle holders. Alex sighed.

In addition to all of this, and laid out in
alphabetical order, were dozens of clear plastic sachets containing various
herbs, all neatly labelled. There were also a number of miniature ceramic pots,
stoppered
and containing scented oils.

A tiny hand tapped him on the shoulder.

Alex leapt backwards in terror, scattering books and
the jar of
handfasting
oil from the trunk. It tumbled
to the floor, spilling its contents on the carpet. Amy stood in her pyjamas
biting her thumb.

"How long have you been standing there?"
Alex had to put a hand on his drumming heart.

"I was having a bad dream," said Amy. She
looked about to cry.

He sighed again, but this time with relief. All of his
anger and confusion was dissolved instantly by the apparition of his daughter.
Nothing was more important to Alex than the happiness and security of his
children. He saw his duties as a father as a sacred calling, and any dispute
with Maggie was a detail, a secondary matter. It could all be worked out
later. He spread out his arms to Amy.
"A dream, my
darling?
Come here, let me cuddle you. Is that better? I'm here to chase
away all bad dreams. Shall I carry you back to your bed? Here we go. Or do you
want to come to our bed?"

"Your bed."

"Anything you want, my darling. Anything you
want."

Alex carried Amy back to his room and tucked her into
bed. He stroked her hair and promised to return to her in a few minutes. Then
he went back to the spare room, replacing everything as he'd found it. He
located the jar he'd knocked to the floor and cleaned up the mess. He even
tried to disguise the accident by refilling the jar with a drop or two of the
olive oil. The box was restored to the foot of the wardrobe and layered over
with shoes. He switched off the light, returned to his own room, and climbed
into bed beside Amy.

Maggie arrived half an hour later, by which time Amy
was asleep. Alex also pretended to be asleep. She slipped into bed beside him,
and he felt a wave of cold pass from her. A draft of woods and earth smells
came from her hair.